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Woman Says Alexa Device Recorded Her Private Conversation and Sent It To Random Contact; Amazon Confirms the Incident (kiro7.com)
Gary Horcher, reporting for KIRO7: A Portland family contacted Amazon to investigate after they say a private conversation in their home was recorded by Amazon's Alexa -- the voice-controlled smart speaker -- and that the recorded audio was sent to the phone of a random person in Seattle, who was in the family's contact list. "My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying," said Danielle, who did not want us to use her last name. Every room in her family home was wired with the Amazon devices to control her home's heat, lights and security system. But Danielle said two weeks ago their love for Alexa changed with an alarming phone call. "The person on the other line said, 'unplug your Alexa devices right now,'" she said. '"You're being hacked.'" That person was one of her husband's employees, calling from Seattle. "We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house," she said. "At first, my husband was, like, 'no you didn't!' And the (recipient of the message) said 'You sat there talking about hardwood floors.' And we said, 'oh gosh, you really did hear us.'" Danielle listened to the conversation when it was sent back to her, and she couldn't believe someone 176 miles away heard it too. In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said, "Amazon takes privacy very seriously. We investigated what happened and determined this was an extremely rare occurrence. We are taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future."
Further reading: Amazon Admits Its AI Alexa is Creepily Laughing at People.
Further reading: Amazon Admits Its AI Alexa is Creepily Laughing at People.
"Amazon takes privacy very seriously."
Obviously not.
You're nuts to have any of these devices in your house, or at the very least, plugged into power when you're not actively using it.
I'm really not one of those people who fear new technology or anything of the sort. However, how can it not eventually go horribly wrong when you plant recording devices in your own house that are designed specifically record and send the audio offsite. Eventually, there will be mistakes made with the audio or a hack, or something you said will violate some law "forcing" the company who has the recording to do some particular thing with it.
I'm all for new technology, but these things should have bad idea written all over them in bold print.... and I don't mean that to be specific to Amazon, either. Apple and Google's take on the things are just as bad.
More people should make an effort to understand what their personal electronics actually do before purchasing. We (as a society) need to incorporate classes on this sort of thing into primary education classes.
I received one of these messages just a week ago. Alexa sent me a message of my friend and his girlfriend having a private moment. I immediately texted him to ask if he intended to do that and he did not- so weird.
I've been thinking for a while that this is the kind of thing that needs to happen more to get people to actually care about their privacy. Maybe a timed worm that'll gradually install itself on all sorts of these devices, and all at once start sharing recorded conversations with strangers. Or a smartphone virus that randomly takes pictures of people while they're facebooking on the toilet and posts them.
My phone has several very good microphones, as does my computer. Both devices also have extremely good cameras. It seems silly to focus on devices like Alexa and Google Home when they have relatively small market penetration and are less capable of spying on us than the cellular and GPS-equipped monitoring devices we slip into our pockets whenever we go *anywhere*.
My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying,"
Um, yeah ... that's how they know you said commands and stuff. They listen to what you are saying.
Wanna be more specific, Amazon?
Like, actually say what really caused it to happen so that people can evaluate for themselves just how rare it is?
Because, you know... if your trustworthiness has already been called into question by evidence that a private conversation was eavesdropped on by your technology, then it makes no reasonable sense to simply take your word for it that whatever caused it to happen was genuinely "rare" at all.
I'm not saying that Amazon is necessarily lying here... but it makes no sense to actually trust what they are saying about this without being able to evaluate that claim's veracity for ourselves, and the longer they stay quiet, the sooner any honest skepticism can slide into outright disbelief.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The rare occurrence was that the audio was sent to a contact,not that it was always recording.
It's an extremely rare occurrence that the data Amazon wants from you accidentally goes to someone else instead. Who the fuck knows what she's doing if she's able to record an entire conversation and send it to someone. That's not what Alexa's supposed to do. She listens to a command or two and does something for you (plays a song, tells the temperature). Why does the damn thing even have this capability?! This is not a surprise to me in the slightest. And like I'm trying to illustrate here, it would be no surprise to me that Amazon was using these things for ill-gotten gains. Electronically parsing your conversations to find out what advertisements they want to put in front of you and more.
Part of me wonders what really happened here...
An Alexa device can make phone calls if set up for it, and they apparently had this person's phone number imported into their Alexa contacts, so they clearly had that feature configured.
So was this just a case of Alexa making a phone call, without "Daielle" being aware of it? If the call was to a google voice number or similar service, it would just recorded the unanswered call and emailed them. This case would be just a speech activated equivalent of butt-dialing, paired with a google-voice emailed voicemail twist.
Or was this a case where Amazon generated audio files and then emailed them to some random person out of the contact list?
I kind kind of understand how the first case could happen by accident, but still be disconcerting. However, the second case would be very disconcerting.
Given that Amazon is offering to de-provision the communications feature for them, I'm inclined to think this was a "butt dialing" incident, but I'd love to hear some actual details to confirm one way or the other. Clearly the title of the news article is designed to make you think it was the second case, where Alexa recorded the call, not google voice, but there's a lot of vagueness here that makes it unclear.
-Matt
They meant to send the audio and contact info to advertisers of hardwood floors. The need to fix their algorithms so the audio gets sent to the correct advertiser.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I think the obvious difference is that these home assistants by Amazon, Apple, and Google are actively listening by design. I have the Google assistant turned off on my Pixel...I know because it keeps notifying me to turn it on. Now could the mic on my phone or pc be activated by an unscrupulous actor a la "Person of Interest"? Sure. But that seems far less likely than a software glitch in a device that's supposed to be listening to me.
Amazon is taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen in the future. I already took steps to ensure it would never happen by not buying a device like that.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
I assume what happened was they triggered the "send a voice message" function in their conversation and their Echo device's volume was turned down and didn't hear the Echo activation beep or see the light. Based on this guide, all you have to do is say something that sounds like "Alexa send a voice message to XXX" and if XXX is a unique contact id, then the Echo sends it without further confirmation.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help...
To send a voice message using a supported Echo device
1 - Say, "Send a message to [contact name]."
2 - If the name is similar to other contacts in your address book, Alexa repeats the name back for you to confirm.
3 - Once you confirm the name, Alexa prompts you for the message.
4- When you've finished talking, Alexa sends your voice message.
Dave, I've noticed your bowel movements are growing in time, so I told the google telephone assistant AI schedule a visit to your doctor.
Dave, I've noticed your shower runs for more than 5 minutes, and that's a waste of water. I posted this shameful habit to your Baidu page and lowered your Beijing social credit score.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You misunderstand - They *do* take privacy very seriously: it interferes with their profit margins and they're doing their best to eliminate it without triggering excessive consumer backlash.
As yourself this: Does this incident make you substantially less likely to buy or use one of their home surveillance devices, or were you already committed to one camp or the other? If there's no substantial change, then they're doing an effective job of limiting backlash.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.